


Code Of Conduct

by reywritethestar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 1940s, Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, Ben is a grumpy soft boi in a three-piece suit, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, I think that's everything, Mating, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Rey is smashing through that glass ceiling, no wait, okay now that's it, we love to see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:49:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24884107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reywritethestar/pseuds/reywritethestar
Summary: It was early morning, a second World War still raged on across the Channel, and Ben Solo was thoroughly distracted.After being transferred to England, world-renowned code-breaker and Alpha Ben Solo has to adjust to life at Bletchley Park - the home of the Allied Resistance. He expected long hours, double shifts and ciphers, ciphers, and more ciphers.What he didn't expect was Rey, an Omega with a higher IQ than ninety-eight percent of the world's population who swears like a sailor and smells like home.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 43
Kudos: 280
Collections: Reylo Jukebox Exchange





	Code Of Conduct

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dashalle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashalle/gifts).



> Hello gang! This fic is part of the Reylo Jukebox Exchange and is a gift for the wonderful Halle - I'm sorry it's a tad late! I had so much fun with this prompt, and I now have a new addition to my 'Feel Good' Spotify playlist.
> 
> For those who are interested in history, Bletchley Park did actually exist as the centre for British codebreaking. It was also the place where master cryptanalyst Alan Turing's Enigma Machine was invented, which was crucial in decoding German messages and subsequently defeating them. You can learn more about their work [here](https://bletchleypark.org.uk/).
> 
> I mostly live on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/reywritethestar) and [Tumblr](https://reywritethestar.tumblr.com/), where I take prompts and yell about Reylo. Come and say hi!

It was early morning, a second World War still raged on across the Channel, and Ben Solo was thoroughly distracted.

Being one of America’s finest code-breakers and a cryptanalyst extraordinaire, Ben had been transferred to England just last month as word spread that the British were close to cracking the German enigma codes that had eluded all their best efforts for so long. Ben had arrived at Bletchley Park quite skeptical of the whole operation - the estate looked rather worse for wear with a shabby exterior and overgrown garden - but this unassuming mansion in the English countryside had more to it than first meets the eye. Filled with life and the brightest codebreakers in the world, Bletchley was the center of the Allied resistance against the German enigmas. The scent of so many designations crammed into one mansion had initially been a tad overwhelming, but now Ben wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Of course, his desire to stay at Bletchley - despite the horrendous weather - had absolutely nothing to do with his wonderful Cryptanalysis Partner. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that despite their government-issue suppressants, she smelled so much like home that he never wanted to leave her side.

And there it was: the scent of parchment and freshly-cut grass wafted towards him, growing stronger as he heard the sharp click of heels coming down the corridor towards their office. Ben tugged at the bottom of his dove grey waistcoat, splaying his hands on the desk as he desperately tried to focus on the ciphers stacked neatly on this desk in front of him. The scent grew stronger as terrible off-key humming came into earshot. 

It grew stronger still, the wide open windows swirling the tendrils of scent around the room until it’s all Ben could think about.

“Morning, Ben!”

Ben swivelled in his chair to look at Rey as she strutted into their office. Theoretically, the two of them couldn’t be any more different; they even despised each other at first. Before she became one of the few people recruited through the “unsolvable” Sunday Times crossword that MI5 had concocted, Rey used to be a barmaid in Hackney. Ben was not best pleased when she burst into his office, shaking his hand and swearing like a sailor, yet even back then he couldn’t help but admit that the halls of Bletchley were suddenly brightened by her laughter and the lingering scent of parchment and freshly-cut grass. 

She was always drop-dead gorgeous with her rapier-wit and red-lipped smile but today, as the soft summer breeze ruffled her bright green summer dress, Ben could practically feel his brain turning into a puddle of Alpha mush. This wasn’t exactly a new occurrence, but as Rey flung herself into her chair and emptied her tray of ciphers onto the desk, Ben could sense something different about her.

“Hullo, Rey,” he said as he leaned back in his chair, groaning as he stretched. He’d been hunched over these damned scraps of paper since 7 o’clock, and his back ached something fierce. “Any new developments with the bombe machines?”

Rey paused mid-tray dumping, and sighed. “No, I popped into Hut 6 on the way over here and Armitage was saying that Rose had disrupted the plugboard, which is bollocks.” Rey glanced at him through dark, full lashes, and Ben had to tug on his tie. Was it just him, or was it an unseasonably hot day for April? “I just told him to move his jacksie and help her bypass the compressor so we don’t have to solve these sodding ciphers manually.”

Ben chuckled, leaning his forearms on the desk. “So a normal morning, then?” 

“Oh, of course! I’m sure Rose’ll whip him into shape, though,” Rey said with a wink.

Ben coughed, desperately trying to avoid swallowing his own tongue.

Rey rifled through the second tray on her desk, attempting to sort through them before dumping those all over her desk as well. She picked up a pink slip of paper with a smile, studying the anonymous type.

“Another one?” Ben asked, his heart jumping into his throat.

Rey shot him a look as she stuffed it into her desk draw. “Hush, now, I think they’re sweet! A secret admirer who writes anonymous love notes in code is someone after my own heart.”

Ben shrugged nonchalantly as he sprawled out in his chair. “You don’t think they’re a bit sappy?”

At that, Rey raised her head and looked - really _looked_ \- at him, something dangerously close to affection in her eyes. “I love them.”

Ben shifted in his seat, feeling very much like an ant under a magnifying glass. “Right.”

They passed the morning in a comfortable silence, broken only by the fevered scratch of pencil on paper, the distant warble of a radio down the corridor, and an annoyingly loud blackbird that trilled in a tree just outside the window. Ben and Rey worked in perfect synchronicity, just like they always had. Whenever a particularly elusive cipher frustrated him, Ben would just slide it across his desk and onto Rey’s, who would pluck it from the jumbled wasteland of ciphers - her desk always looked like a bomb just dropped on it - and would, without fail, solve it. Whenever he sensed Rey flagging, her scent spiking in irritation, Ben would always nip to the tea room and snag her a pot of strong Earl Grey, setting it down wordlessly next to her before resuming his work.

By all means, it should be another peaceful, if exhausting, day of manual code-breaking. Yet as his stack of codes slowly dwindled, his hind-brain became more insistent: something was different about Rey. Normally, Ben is more than capable of suppressing it, but the wolf inside of him was persistent. The more he ignored it, the more the thought scrabbled for purchase, yowling over and over for attention. Ben’s skin began to prickle as the brisk breeze scraped against his skin, his scribbles became more erratic, his pulse quickened until finally...

Rey's pencil snapped. 

"Bloody hell.”

Ben jerked his head up and froze, finding Rey staring at him in disbelief. Had she realised how rattled he was? He wouldn’t be surprised if she had; he wasn’t being subtle in the slightest and even if he was, Rey was incredibly perceptive - 

"The code's in _binary_." Rey gasped. The following silence was deafening; even the blackbird had stopped singing.

Ben was thoroughly confused. “What?” 

"It’s in binary, Ben!” Rey said as excitement grew in her eyes. The scrape of her chair on the hardwood floor rang painfully in Ben’s ears, the clack of her heels reverberating like a bass drum in his chest as she rounded their desks.

“We’ve been operating on the assumption that these blinkin’ Enigma Ciphers are in Morse Code, but they’re not! The Germans have been translating their radio messages from German into binary, translating the binary into English and _then_ into Morse Code.” Rey leaned further into Ben’s space as she scrawled something across the slip of paper in her chicken scratch writing. “The Germans are planning to blitz London at 19:00 tonight. They’re bastards, but they’re clever bastards.”

His eyes flicked across the paper before staring at her in wonder as the full realisation of what she had just discovered hit him like a freight train..

"Rey, you’ve just manually decoded the German Enigma.”

Rey blushed, like she always did when someone gave her any praise. Ben made sure to give her at least one compliment a day. Even if it was via pink slips of paper and anonymous type every morning.

“It wasn’t that hard, really,” she said, fluffing her hair nervously.

“‘Wasn’t that hard? Rey, this changes _everything_ ,” Ben said as he sprung out of his seat, smoothing out the crumpled paper, “this is going to save lives.” He turned towards her and stopped in his tracks. He’d been so focused on this revelation, he hadn’t realised how close together he and Rey were.

He inhaled sharply, and quickly wished that he hadn’t. The scent of parchment and fresh-cut grass filled his nostrils, curling through his lungs and around his brain until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think about anything else but _Omega_ , _lover_ , _Rey_.

He saw the exact moment Rey felt it too: the way her pupils blew wide, her breath hitched, her scent spiked. Ben inhaled again, slowly as if savouring his first sip of coffee in the morning, wondering if his mind had been playing tricks on him.

No. There it was. Underneath the familiar scent was something sharper; ink and wood smoke. Ben swayed on the spot, because he knew that scent. He knew that scent better than he knew the back of his hand.

The scent was his.

Ben’s mind whirred, the cogs in his brain desperately trying to solve this last, crucial enigma. He shifted from foot to foot, torn between turning his back on Rey and the overwhelming temptation to lean in closer. He wasn’t certain which choice was more terrifying.

Rey looked equally shell-shocked, gazing up at him with her own wide, doe eyes. Their scents mingled in the air, suddenly heavy and taught with tension, and blended together in a seamless concoction of what could only be described as home. Ink and parchment, fresh grass and woodsmoke. It was intoxicating.

Ben didn’t even realise that he was leaning in closer until he heard Rey’s breath hitch, slicing through the stillness. He froze, his hand paused inches away from her chestnut hair, cascading in wild curls to her shoulders.

“Rey,” he gritted out, not daring to move a muscle, “I know this is personal, but did you take your suppressant today?”

Rey nodded her head. Her pupils were so huge that only a thin ring of her hazel-green irises were visible. “Did you?”

At those two words, the feverish whirring of Ben’s mind suddenly ground to a halt. Had he taken his suppressants today? He’d had to work through the night because one of their most vital bombe machines had decided to throw in the towel, but he thought he’d taken his pill with his coffee this morning…

He dug his other hand into the pocket of his waistcoat, his heart sinking as he fished out the large red pill. The two of them just stared down at the medicine as it lay on his open palm, the plastic film gleaming in the sunlight.

It was Ben that broke the silence first.

“Oh, _shoot_ ,” he hissed as he grabbed his coffee. There were only a few sips left in the flimsy paper cup, and it would surely be stale by now, but he didn’t care. Despite the growing instinct to _kisstakebond_ seeping into his veins, he had to take it; if he were ever to gather his courage and actually make a move, it would have been more romantic, more meaningful than this. Rey deserved better. She deserved the world in all it’s bombed-out, fucked up glory.

Yet just as he raised the pill to his lips, Rey’s warm fingers wrapped around his wrist in a firm grip. Ben nearly dropped the cup just feeling her skin against his.

“Rey, what are you doing? I need to take this, you should leave -”

“I should leave,” Rey interrupted him breathlessly, “and you should take it.” Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips nervously, and Ben had to suppress a whine. “But I don’t want you to.”

Those six words. Six simple words, and the incessant howling inside of Ben shattered into nothing but a white noise of _shewantsmeomegawantsmeReywantsme_.

Ben barely had the presence of mind to set the coffee cup back on his desk before he drew Rey into him by the waist and kissed her. Their lips crashed together over and over as Rey's hands greedily roamed over his chest, her clever fingers loosening his tie and throwing it to the floor. They kissed hungrily, their teeth clacking together at times but Ben couldn't give a toss because it was Rey’s lips against his, Rey’s fingers that wound through his hair, Rey’s scent that mingled with his in the sun-soaked office.

Rey whined as her hands scrabbled at his waistcoat, the scent of slick beginning to perfume the hazy summer air. Ben wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and drew her impossibly closer with a growl, sending a shiver down Rey's spine as she moaned into his mouth, hooking one of her legs around his waist.

Somehow, Ben knew exactly what she wanted. With a groan, he grasped Rey’s other thigh and hoisted her up as she wrapped her legs around his waist. Ben’s nostrils flared as the scent of Rey’s slick wafted up to meet him.

He carried her to his desk, gritting his teeth as Rey grazed her teeth down his neck. Ben lay her down gently and planted his palms on the desk, framing her face. Their ragged breaths mingled with their scent in the stillness. As Ben gazed down at her, sprawled out and panting on his desk, it took all of his focus to refrain from kissing her. Still, he satisfied himself by placing a light kiss on the inside of her wrist, taking pleasure in the spike of her scent as he did so.

“Rey?”

She gazed up at him, impatience warring with affection in her eyes. “Yes?”

He hung his head, clutching her hand in both of his. “I...I can’t do this. You deserve better than a quick fix on a desk with an Alpha who can’t control his Ruts.” 

He heard her sharp intake of breath, the rustle of chiffon as she sat up, but plowed on regardless. “I’m not the kind of fella to pass the buck when it comes to ladies and their...y’know…”

“Heats?” Rey supplies, her voice laced with tenderness.

“Right.” Ben finished, daring to sneak a glance at Rey. Her hair was wild, her curls all out of place despite the industrial-strength hairspray she sprayed in it every couple of hours. Her lipstick was diluted from a vivid red to light pink, and Ben was positive he now sported a similar look on his own mouth now. She looked thoroughly wrecked, with something dangerously resembling affection shining in her eyes. Which was why he had to nip this in the bud.

“You deserve better, Rey. You deserve -”

A huge snort interrupted him, and Ben just looked in astonishment as Rey threw her head back and laughed. 

“Ben, you absolute dope,” Rey giggled, pulling her skirt down and reaching out to smooth his waistcoat. Maybe it was his hunched shoulders, the bow of his head, but Ben watched as all the mirth drained out of Rey’s face, replaced instead with something else entirely, something he dared not hope for…

“What’re you so afraid of, Ben?” Rey murmured softly as she tenderly cupped his cheek, her thumb stroking his cheekbone.

Ben took a large, steadying breath as he caught Rey’s other hand in his own, placing a soft kiss on her open palm. “I’ve been told I’m...overly-zealous when I’m in Rut. I can get a little rough, and I tend to lose control.”

Rey quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t see a problem with any of those things.”

Ben jerked his head up to stare incredulously at her. “You don’t?”

A coquettish smile slowly spread across Rey’s lips as she held his gaze. “I don’t.” She wrapped her legs tighter around his waist, her heels digging slightly into his back. “It takes a lot more than that to scare me, Solo.” She fixed him with a sultry stare. “Do I scare you?”

Ben swallowed hard. “No.”

“Good, ‘cus there’s no need to,” Rey said as she leaned in, “I don’t bite.” She paused, considering something, before a mischievous glint appeared in her eyes. “Well,” she leaned even further into Ben’s space, her lips grazing the shell of his ear. “Only if you want me to.”

Having Rey whisper such improper things in his ear, with the scent of her slick still lingering in the air...it was more than Ben could bear.

“Where’s your room?” He growled out as he lifted her off the table, holding her up with one arm as he swept up their briefcases in the other.

“East wing, third floor,” Rey gasped, clinging on to him as he kicked their office door open and stepped into the corridor - right in front of Armitage.

The Beta just stared at them, mouth agape like a fish out of water. Ben wished he had a camera.

“Armitage, inform Head Office that I’ve cracked the Enigma Code!” Rey yelled at him as Ben jogged past him. “And tell them Ben and I will be indisposed for the next few days!”

“What the blazes - Solo!” Ben spared a glance behind him to see Hux, stunned and red-faced, staring down at the scrap of paper Rey had tossed at him. Rey giggled in his ear as he took the stairs two at a time, hurtling towards their future. It was too late to turn back now - and even if he could, he wouldn’t.

1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣1️⃣0️⃣1️⃣1️⃣1️⃣0️⃣

  
  


Later that evening, as they basked in the cosy afterglow of what could only be described as a sex marathon, Ben gazed down at Rey. Her head was pillowed on his bare chest, her fingers tracing a feather-light trail on the ring of fresh teeth marks on his chest. Her hair, straight and damp from the shower, cascaded over her shoulder, revealing a similar mark just below her ear. 

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Ben pulled back, looking at Rey quizzically. “What for?”

Rey grinned as she bent down and rifled under her bed, coming up with a shoebox in hand. When she opened it, Ben’s eyes widened. The box was nearly filled to the brim with pink slips of paper. 

“For your letters.”

Ben laughed for the first time in forever as Rey tackled him onto the pillows and slotted her lips over his, 

Here, with Rey’s warmth against him and her lips on his, Ben felt a fierceness he’d never felt before rear its head within him, it’s fangs bared and claws sharpened, and he knew that he would fight tooth and nail to make Rey happy for as long as she wanted him. He wouldn’t want it any other way.


End file.
